Samantha Rose and Linsey
MacKenzie have established an idyllic life of married bliss in Australia, away
from the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, away from mysterious corpses,
and—most of all—away from Dr. Emir’s multiverse machine.

But Sam is a detective
at heart, and even on the other side of the world, she can’t help wonder if a
series of unsolved killings she reads about are related—not just to each other,
but to the only unsolved case of her short career.

She knows Jane Doe’s
true name, but Sam never discovered who killed the woman found in an empty
Alabama field in spring of 2069. She doesn’t even know which version of herself
she buried under a plain headstone.

When
Mac suddenly disappears, Sam realizes she is going to once more be caught up in
a silent war she still doesn’t fully understand. Every step she takes to save
Mac puts the world she knows at risk, and moves her one step closer to becoming
the girl in the grave.

Liana Brooks write sci-fi and crime
fiction for people who like happy endings. She believes in time travel to the
future, even if it takes a good book and all night to get there. When she isn’t
writing, Liana hikes the mountains of Alaska with her family and giant dog.
Find her at LianaBrooks.com or on Twitter as @LianaBrooks

“Decoherence (n): a
period of time when all iterations collapse and there is only one possible
reality.”

~ Excerpt from Definitions of Time by Emmanuela Pine,
I1

Day 247

Year 5 of
Progress

Capitol Spire

Main Continent

Iteration 17—Fan 1

… three.
Rose stood and peered through the frosted, warped glass of the conference room
as the speaker turned away. It didn’t matter which iteration she was in, Emir
was predictable. She had seven seconds to do a head count. She didn’t need that
long.

A
quick head count was all it took to confirm that the einselected nodes she’d
been sent to assassinate were where they belonged.

Every
iteration had nodes, people or events that kept that variation of human history
from collapsing. Dr. Emir had created a machine that allowed people not only to
move along their own timeline, but at critical convergence points, it allowed
them to cross between realities. But the Mechanism for Iteration Alignment’s
greatest ability was the one that allowed Dr. Emir and Central Command to steer
history by erasing futures they didn’t want.

Rose
knelt beside the door, did one final sweep for alarms, and nodded for her team
to move in. It was her job to cross at convergence points, kill the nodes, and
collapse the futures that no one wanted.

One
look at the version of herself watching this iteration’s Emir with rapt
fascination was enough to make Rose want to snip this future in the bud.

Chubby
was the first thing that came to mind. Rose’s doppelganger was enjoying being
at the top of the social pyramid and probably gorging on whatever passed as a
delicacy here. The squared bangs with a streak of riotous red only accented the
corpulence and lack of self-control the inferior other had.

Even
with a heavy wood door between them, Rose could hear that this iteration’s Emir
was hypothesizing things the MIA was never meant to do. Everyone with half a
brain knew that decoherence didn’t combine iterations, it crushed them. Only
the true timeline, the Prime, would survive decoherence. Planning to welcome and
integrate doppelgangers into the society was pure idiocy.

The
techs sealing the door shut gave her the high sign.

Rose
nodded to her hacker.

“Cameras
locked. Security is deaf and blind, ma’am” Logan’s voice was a soft whisper in
her earpiece. He was a genius with computer systems, a fact that had saved him
when they collapsed I-38 three years ago. “We have a fifteen-minute window.”